Fallout: Atlanta
by In Defiance of Science
Summary: Twisted spires of irradiated steel reaching for the sky they once pierced is all that is left of the once great Capital of the Southeast, a monument to the sins of humanity. The secrets of one of the most advanced pre-war cities are contained in these ruins, though, and the Enclave, Brotherhood, and the local confederacy of city-states are vying for control when the Exile emerges.
1. Exiled

**Disclaimer: Fallout is owned by Bethesda. All characters that have not appeared before in any Fallout works belong to me.**

* * *

Blood was a lot more pungent than most people initially thought. Sure, people get small cuts and scrapes, and you can smell the tang of iron, but it's not enough to prepare anyone for the scent that comes from a near-fully exsanguinated human corpse.

"David," was the general whisper of the crowd surrounding him. There was an undercurrent, almost a riptide of horror hidden beneath the shocked whisper. "What did you _do_?"

Looking around, taking in the steel walls and vibrant paints that encased them for what he knew would likely be one of the last times he would do so, David replied, "What I had to. For everyone." He couldn't imagine what he looked like to them. The warm, slippery feeling of someone else's life coating nearly his entire body wasn't quite as strange as it probably should have been. Right now, it felt like it was on someone else. He was just borrowing their senses for now. They weren't his.

The residents of Vault 64 merely stared at him, incomprehension in their gaze. That wasn't what was supposed to happen. Couldn't they see why it needed to happen? Oh well, it was done.

No surprise registered when he was staring down the barrels of a multitude of guns. David recognized some of them, he had made them himself. They didn't see a lot of use. Funny that they were to be used on him now. "Come with us," said one of the men holding the guns. He almost recognized the voice. "Don't make this any harder than it has to be."

"Okay," was all he said. Better than he was expecting, really. Silently, David got to his feet, not providing any resistance to the woman locking his hands behind his back. It was fine. What needed to be done was already finished. Why couldn't he think?

He blinked. They had stopped in front of the dreary rooms that had been repurposed for use as cells before his lifetime. Funny, he was sure that they were further away. Almost gently, he was nudged into the room. He went and sat down on the cot, staring at the wall, wondering why they bothered. There wasn't a reason for criminals anymore; they had broken through the door. That was all a criminal was good for, was breaking through the door.

Shock. That was what Alder would have called it. Numbly, he tried to remember how to break out of it, but he couldn't really think.

When two people walked in the room, his gaze didn't even turn to them. David was still busy staring at the walls, grey instead of red, wondering if they had always been so dull.

"David," the girl said, putting her hands on his shoulders. He looked up at her, into her eyes, so bright and alive, familiar but for some reason completely unrecognizable. That was probably part of the shock, he thought somewhere in the back of his mind.

Then she slapped him. Hard.

"What the _hell_?!" he shouted, covering his cheek and curling away, his mind immediately rebooting. "What-"

"No, what the _fuck_, David?!" she shouted back at him. He looked back up at her, recognizing her instantly. Morgan stood over him, looking equal parts livid and terrified. "You fucking killed her!"

"What?" he asked, rubbing his cheek. The sting was starting to leave, but there would be a red handprint there for a day, at least. "What are you talking about?"

"The Overseer! You killed her, David! Took a knife and slit her throat! There was blood everywhere; you're still covered in it!"

David froze. He pulled his hand away from his cheek, the wet feeling finally registering. Staring down at his hand, stained a dark red, what he had finally done clicked in his head. "Oh, shit," he said. "I killed her. I really did it."

Alder, the boy who had come in with Morgan, smacked a hand to his face. "Yeah. Yeah, you did. I mean, I get why, a lot of us do, but you realize that there's no way you're getting out of this, right? Even if it was justified."

"I knew the consequences when I made the decision, Alder," David muttered, mind whirling now that it could. "I'll be executed, probably. No need to keep around the rulebreakers with the door finally open."

Morgan sat down heavily next to him on the cot, leaning into him. She was much smaller than him, able to curl entirely into him. "Maybe they'll use you to build. They can't just kill you. You're only seventeen."

"Not gonna matter anymore," Alder said. He was leaning on the wall across from them. "The door's open. Nothing keeping criminals in anymore, so they're just a flight risk."

David felt something hot against the side of his shirt. Looking down, he saw that it was Morgan, her tears dripping onto his shirt as the side of her face and vault suit were stained red by the blood still coating him. Off-handedly, he thought about how angry she would be later about having to wash the stickiness out of her hair, lamenting that she really should get around to cutting her hair short again. When he heard a sniffle, he flicked his gaze back over to Alder, catching him angry wiping his eyes and nose.

He closed his eyes and thought. This was a problem. There was a solution, there always was. And there was something about Alder's analysis that resonated with him.

Then it hit him.

"Nothing keeping criminals in anymore…" he muttered. He opened his eyes, a new conviction showing through them.

Alder stared back at him, raising an eyebrow. Morgan pulled slightly away from him, staring up at him with a questioning gaze. "Get rid of me," he said as an explanation. "Throw me out of the vault, use me as a, what's the word, scout. Pathfinder. I can pave the way for the vault. I mean, who knows what's out there? It'd be good to use someone expendable to get rid of obstacles."

Both of their eyes lit up. Alder flicked his long hair back, putting a hand to his chin. "That could work," he said. "You won't be among the population of the vault anymore, and you're still working towards the goal that we were all given."

"We might get to see you again," Morgan said, slowly. "When tensions have cooled, you could come see us again. Or maybe, we could come find you."

David nodded, his mind still on the fact that he would be leaving the vault. It was what they all dreamed of. They had always been secure in the idea that they would be able to come back if anything went wrong, though. His greatest dream turned bittersweet. "I'll have to survive long enough," he said, trying to figure out what he would need. If they would let him take anything.

"Oh please," Alder scoffed. "If anyone can do it, it's you. The only person with better marksman scores than you is Morgan, and no-one has anything on you in general knowledge and jury-rigging. I taught you how to make stimpaks, right?"

"You sure did," David said, a grin slowly overtaking his face. "Yeah, I can do this. I can survive. We have a radio, right?"

"We do now," Morgan muttered. "I'm still wondering who the fuck designed this vault so that the radio was on the outside. I wonder if all the other vaults have already recolonized the world?"

David grinned, standing up. There was a purpose now. Things that needed to be done. "Trailblazer David, at your service. Here to rediscover the world for you."

"Hold on, wait," Alder said, snapping his fingers. "That could work. If we convince whoever gets appointed as Overseer that you could be an expendable pathfinder – oh don't give me that look, you know what I'm saying – they might actually send you out."

Clapping his hands together, David was forcefully reminded that he was still covered in blood. He grimaced, saying, "Alright, we have our course of action. Can you also convince them to let me take a shower or something? This really isn't sanitary. Or pleasant."

* * *

They did end up letting him shower, with two guards in the room. David didn't really care; he wasn't all too shy. They both stared forwards anyways.

After his shower, they sent him back to his room with a clean vaultsuit, but still didn't give back his pip-boy. He wasn't really sure what they thought he would do with it. Play some games, maybe? That would be nice. His mind was far too restless at normal times, allowing him to jump from subject to subject at near baffling speeds, and this situation was far from normal, leaving his mind much more restless than normal.

It was at the point that David thought his head would explode if he stared at the walls any longer that someone new walked in. His gaze flicked over to the newcomer, and he groaned mentally. Out of all the candidates, did they really have to pick him?

"David," said the Overseer. "It's time to talk."

"So it is, Joseph," David said, turning over to him. "But first, I have to ask, didn't anyone talk about _this_?"

Joseph glared back when David motioned to him. "Unlike your savagery, yes, a consensus was reached, and that consensus resulted in me becoming Overseer. I didn't stage a coup, if that was what you're asking. If that's what you had intended on."

"I had my reasons and you know them," growled David, standing up to tower over him. "You'd probably agree with them if you weren't just a fucking sheep."

"Oh, don't turn this on me, you bastard," Joseph snarled back, sticking a finger in his face. "I'm not the one who just committed matricide."

"No, of course not. Matricide is for people who actual have original thoughts bouncing around in their skulls." The glared David leveled at the smaller man could have re-frozen the legendary glaciers. "You don't actually know my reasons, do you?"

"Of course not!" Joseph exploded, spittle flying into David's face. "What in the name of God could possibly justify the death of the Overseer?!"

David stared down at the man, breathing hard from his outburst. While Joseph attempted to compose himself, David sat back down and said, "If you have to ask that question, then the answer wouldn't make sense to you."

Closing his eyes, Joseph grit his teeth. "Arguing with you was not the reason that I came in here."

"No? Then why, to gloat?"

"An Overseer should make sure that justice is carried out. I am glad to say that once your sentence has begun, this vault will no longer have to suffer your barbarism," Joseph said, looking down his nose at David.

"Oh?" asked the larger boy, trying to cover the sudden trepidation in his voice. This was what they had planned on, but he still wanted to stay with everyone. He had been hoping for a miracle, that enough people agreed with him to keep him around, but it sounded like that wasn't the case. "And what's my sentence, exile?"

"It's what we spent the last seventeen hours debating. Not an easy decision, but no one wanted more death, so you will not be executed." Joseph paused briefly, allowing him to let go of the breath he was holding and close his eyes.

"Instead, your sentence is to be banishment."

David's eyes opened again, and he suddenly didn't feel as light as he did a second ago. "You'll be using me outside the vault?"

"And allow you to remain in contact, where you could infect the vault with your criminality? I think not." Fear crept into David's heart, and he felt a bead of sweat trail through his hair. With a malicious smile, Joseph continued, saying, "Allow me to explain. Your friends were pushing for a form of exile that would have you in near constant communication with this vault, fulfilling tasks that we would set for you. A foolish notion that could potentially have the people view you as a hero, which would be a truly disastrous situation. Instead, you are to be banished. In ten hours, you will be forcibly removed from this vault, and your return is prohibited. You will not be allowed to have communication with any residents, current or future, and when the settlement is established, you will be prohibited from entering. Any vault residents who come into contact with you, inadvertently or intentionally, will have the authorization to fire on you. All records of you will be removed from the database, and no one will speak of you again. Do you understand the terms of your banishment?"

David's head spun, and he had to take a couple seconds to process the word vomit. "Damnatio memoriae. That's – You can't do that."

"I can. In fact, I already have. You will be allowed to keep your pip-boy and a single 10mm pistol with one ammo magazine, but that is the extent of my kindness."

A moment of silence, then, in a hollow voice, all David could say was, "Get out."

Narrowing his eyes, Joseph said, "This is my vault now. I will do as I please."

"You're just a puppet. You do what whoever has their hand shoved up your ass wants." David lifted his gaze to deliver a dead-eyed look directly into Joseph's puce-colored face. "And yeah, you are the Overseer now. What happened to the last one, again?"

Normally, David would have taken a special amusement in watching Joseph run away with his tail between his legs. Right now, though, he was too busy reeling from the punch to his own gut. He had to keep himself in his own body, he couldn't afford to go back to where he was after his murder. So, he had to think.

From now on, he essentially wouldn't exist. Not in any way that would matter. Everyone he had known was now allowed and encouraged to shoot him on sight. He didn't expect them to actually take the liberties that were now given to them, but then again, he didn't expect banishment.

Did no one else understand why she had to die?

Didn't matter now. David had to look forward. He had to think, to plan. Figure out how to keep himself going.

Before that though, he had to sleep. Apparently, he had spent at least seventeen hours awake, and that was without factoring in how long he had waited for Alder and Morgan to help him get his head out of wherever he had gone, and the space between that and the start of the meeting.

Despite the lack of sleep, it still took hours of tossing and turning before David could find something close to rest.

* * *

"Get up." The statement was followed by what was possibly the rudest awakening that David had ever received; the cold steel of a rifle barrel shoved into his chest. Groaning, he forced himself to comply, forcing his eyes open, then blinking several more times as he tried to shake off the exhaustion.

As he sat up, he took note of the two guards in the room. One of them was looking away, not entirely enthusiastic. The other was looking down on him with a searing glare, poorly hiding his disgust. "Morning, Jim," David called out to the less enthusiastic one.

Sighing, Jim answered, "Morning. Not particularly a good one, though."

David stood up, stretching slightly. "Well, depends on how you look at it, I think. I mean, I'm the first person stepping foot out of the vault, right? That's pretty cool."

"An honor you don't deserve," the other guard snarled, shoving the barrel of the rifle into his chest again. David looked at her coolly, starting to understand that less people grasped the purpose of his actions than he had originally though.

"C'mon, Rachel, lay off him," Jim sighed. "He's just trying to brighten a bleak situation up a little. You can get behind that, right?"

Rachel grunted. "Not likely."

"So, when does my walk of shame begin?" David asked, holding out his hands for the cuffs Jim was holding.

As the guard snapped the cuffs around his wrists, he said, "Got an alarm on my pip-boy, it'll go off when it's time."

Just as the latch closed around his wrist, the man's pip-boy went off. "And that would be it. Sorry, David. If it's any consolation, I got what you did. Might not agree with it, but I figure I didn't know the whole story."

"Shut the hell up, Jim," Rachel growled at him. "I'll be reporting you later for sympathizing with criminals."

Jim rolled his eyes, but otherwise didn't respond. Together, they all made their way to the elevator.

This level had originally been a residential level of the vault, but as their population had dwindled, other purposes were found. Now, it was a sort of penitentiary, used to hold prisoners when they hadn't been laboring for the good of the vault.

All this went through David's mind as he walked through the steel hallways of the vault, eventually coming to a stop at the elevator. He knew all the rich history of this vault, his home. The place he would never return to.

The elevator rumbled ominously as it carried the trio upwards, making Jim look around nervously. "Gotta say, I'm damn glad that we're getting out of here. Place is starting to fall apart."

Shrugging, David responded, "Well, we were supposed to be leaving it a century and a half ago. It's a minor miracle it lasted this long."

Rachel poked him with her pistol. "Shut up."

After another few seconds, the elevator let out a ding and opened. There weren't very many people, just the Overseer flanked by two people in power armor, the other three members of the vault's council, and his trio. "Hey, Morgan," said David, knowing she was one of the people in the power armor. Six people were trained each generation to use the old suits. Usually, the person in the other suit was him. "Who's the other guy?"

"It's me," came a voice over the suit's speakers as the person inside shifted. David nodded, recognizing the voice as his friend, Isabella. "Y'know, I always wanted to be in the saddle, but not like this. Sorry."

"Who knows? Maybe I can find one on the outside," David said, sending a small grin in their direction. He nodded over at the three council members. Linda, her hands and face dirty from the plants that she had probably been pulled away from, frowned back at him. Diego, the head of the medical division, sent an encouraging smile to him. Kendra, the chief engineer, nodded back. "Anyone got any advice for me."

"I'm afraid not," Joseph said, stepping forward and cutting everyone else off. "Let it be recorded that the criminal David King was exiled at 1347 hours. He was given a 10mm pistol and allowed to keep his pip-boy and vault suit."

The Overseer made a dismissive hand gesture at the guards. "Proceed."

David turned to face the vault door. A rough hole about the size of a man had been excavated from it, which would be how he was leaving, and eventually, the rest of the vault. They had had to dig through the door since the controls on the inside of the vault had failed, locking them in for a hundred and fifty years past their planned leaving date.

And he would be the first on the other side of it.

He felt Jim take hold of his wrists, unlocking the handcuffs. Morgan ambled up to him in her T51 power armor, silently opening her hand to reveal a 10mm pistol. Though her suit's speakers projected nothing, he could hear her faint sniffling. Giving her the most genuine smile he could, he took the gun, pulling the clip out to make sure it was full, nodding to himself before putting it back in.

Finally, he turned to face the door. He walked up to the hole, took a deep breath, and put his hands on the bottom of the hole to hoist himself up.

Then he looked back. To get one last glimpse of everything he had ever known. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to sear the image in his mind as he turned back around.

David walked out the hole.

* * *

**A/N: This is a story I am writing mainly to practice writing in general. As such, don't be afraid to leave constructive criticism, but please make sure that it is heavier on constructive than criticism; I'm not fragile but hearing other's opinions on things I normally don't share always hits somewhere vulnerable. Thanks for reading.**


	2. Well, the Devil Went Down to Georgia

**Disclaimer: Fallout is owned by Bethesda.**

* * *

David's first step outside the vault was fairly underwhelming. His feet landed on rock, and he beheld a cave, obviously man-made. The controls for the vault were in front of him, at the top of some scaffolding and a catwalk. Just to leave on a dramatic note, he decided to use them.

Making his way up to the controls, he picked up a strange crispness to the air. Must be what it's like to breath the air outside. He didn't think it would be that different than the vault's air, but it was enough to make him marvel, even as the metal creaked and he walked up to the vault controls. Pulling the cord out of his pip-boy, he plugged it into its socket, opening the plexiglass cover over the button to open the door.

David pushed down on it with his fist, smirking because he knew that Joseph would be screaming about it. Then he very quickly turned around and left, knowing that he was likely to get shot if he stayed. That would suck.

There was a light some distance away, curving around a bit of the cave. Dust filtered through the stream, separating the beams of light and casting dancing shadows through them.

Without an ounce of hesitation, David walked through the light and out.

It took him a moment to adjust, with his arms held over his eyes. The light of the sun seared his retinas, and for a moment, he remembered the old warnings to wear eye protection in the Vault-Tec videos they had to watch in school. The other problem was the noise. He had never really considered that the outside would be so cacophonous, with the wind blasting by his ears and the shrill cries of birds. The books had always described birdsong as harmonious and melodic, not at all like this.

Slowly, he lowered his arm, still fighting to keep his eyes open against the harsh glare. The sight that greeted him wasn't unexpected, but it was still horrifying.

The land in front was filled with dull, lifeless colors. Leafless trees creaked as the wind pushed at them, and small, lumpy black forms stared at him, tilting their heads with curiosity. Brown grass sprung up in patchwork over the wastes, doing nothing but reminding those who saw it of what could have been.

With a sigh, David looked at the compass of his pip-boy. It informed him that he was facing north, so he turned around to see what was to the south. When he turned his gaze, though, he lost his breath at the sheer scale of destruction.

Atlanta. Vault 64's residents were all descendants of the chosen residents of the Capital of the Southeast, and they had passed down stories of the majesty of its titanic buildings, reaching past the clouds. Grand festivals held in the streets and a rich cultural history.

All of it, reduced to rubble and twisted steel reaching towards its former glory.

But it wouldn't be a bad place to look for supplies or shelter. Some of the buildings looked as if they had their lower floors intact, and if David could find a couple basements, he'd be set for shelter. All he really needed to find was food and clean water. Releasing a sigh, he started climbing past the mouth of the cave that held his previous life.

It was going to be a harsh journey towards his new one.

* * *

David was quickly learning that his plans for shelter needed some serious revision.

There were skeletons everywhere, left in various haphazard positions and weathered away through the years. The nuclear shadows left from the bombs were paranoia-inducing, always making him spin around when he saw a person in the corner of his eyes only to find the ghost of some long-dead man. What had surprised him, and led to the beginning of his dilemma, were the corpses. Or rather, what he had thought were corpses.

He had already slept through one fitful night, where each bang jarred him into a state of near-panic, and he had to watch for rad-roaches and hideous burrowing rodent-like creatures with no hair when he first found a corpse. His motivation for entering the building was the ammo, still on the shelves, that he was in dire need of. Several weapons were also still displayed on the walls, and he had slung as many as he could carry over his shoulders and stuffed more in a backpack he had found, but all of them were in terrible condition, only fit for scrapping. When he nearly tripped over a body that still had flesh on it, he was more than a little surprised.

It was when the corpse growled and started to get up that David began to question his own sanity. Its eyes glowed with the sickly green tint of radiation, boring into his as it pushed itself onto its feet, some gray skin sloughing off in the process. David could do nothing but stare at his waking nightmare as its bones creaked and the horrible sound of its loose flesh sliding against itself reached his ears. When it stood up on its ancient feet, it let loose a gurgling shriek and clawed at him with rotten fingernails and a stench beyond anything he could describe.

When the pain of the lines it raked across his skin registered, David realized that this was real, not some hallucination his mind had concocted. He recoiled from the blow, dropping the ruined guns he held in his arms. Taking several steps back as he heard the moans and growls of more of these horrors made flesh, he pulled out his 10mm pistol and fired into the monster's skull, blowing whatever brains it had left out the back of its misshapen skull.

It dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, but the report of the gun was answered with more roars and cries, and he could hear the tapping of bare feet against concrete outside. Peeking around the edge of a shelf through the store's destroyed windows, he saw at least ten of the corpses, all shambling towards him at a speed that should be impossible with the state of their bodies. Giving himself a second to breath and collect himself, the exile raised his gun with an outward calm belying his panic and began shooting.

The closest corpse's skull ruptured, covering the ground around it in gore and leaving its body to tumble over itself and trip two more of the horrors. The second bullet jerked back the chest of another monster, slowing it before it re-balanced itself and started moving again. The third bullet he shot went directly into its center mass and dropped it, its body splaying across the road.

After that, he had no more time to take aimed, concentrated shots. The horrors flung themselves through the windows, ignoring the faintly glowing green fluid welling through the marks the jagged glass made on them. He managed to down two more in sprays of luminescent blood before the remaining six were upon him.

They bit, clawed, and tore at him while he yelled and flailed, trying to throw them back just far enough that he could put bullets in them. With a lucky kick and swipe of his arm, he managed to get the one hanging off his right arm into the one behind it so he could put bullets in both of them, leaving him with no ammo in the pistol.

David had just begun to accept his end when the deafeningly loud crack of a sniper rifle rang through the air, and the head of one corpse and chest of another exploded in showers of flesh, bone, and blood. There was no time to question it, though, and so he didn't stop to consider it before he reversed the pistol in his hand and smashed it into another corpse's skull, cracking through the weakened bone and mashing the soft tissue inside. It let out one last gurgle before it slid to the ground, and the last one tackled him.

He managed to flip it over, as it had little muscle left. With a yell, David brought the pistol's grip down on its skull, smashing through it again and again, repeating the action until all that was left was a softly glowing mess of gore. He panted, taking a second to revel in the fact that he was still alive before he looked around, trying to find where the sniper shot had come from.

His scan of the road and rooftops revealed nothing. As far as he could tell, he was just alone as he had been.

Terrifyingly, achingly alone.

* * *

Setting up a makeshift workbench for his weapons wasn't as hard as finding a place to do it, but after three days of increasing paranoia, David had finally managed it.

It was difficult, since he had to stay on the outskirts. His Geiger counter would crackle at him like thunder whenever he traveled more than a couple blocks into the city, and he had been forced to use some scavenged Rad-Away he found in the basement of a long-forgotten clinic more than once. The process was especially terrifying, since it required him to sit still with an IV in his arm and the bag of fluid strung up in a make-shift gurney. He normally spent the time with the pistol in hand, eyes flicking about at every sound.

Food turned out to be less of a problem than David had thought, as he had managed to cook the radroach and rodent meat to get rid of the radiation. Water, on the other hand, was a little more difficult. He didn't have the tools to perform reverse osmosis or carbon filtering, so he had to rely on any bottled water he could find.

With the workbench finally up with all the tools he had gathered, though, he could finally pull apart all the useless guns he had been finding and put together some serviceable ones. The walking corpses wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem with a proper shotgun and rifle.

It was as David was stripping the third decrepit combat shotgun for serviceable parts that he heard the footsteps. Heavy and pounding, and unmistakably belonging to power armor. Grabbing the hunting rifle he had managed to restore and checking to make sure it was loaded, he crept up the stairs to find out whether or not his insanity had finally gotten to him, hoping against hope that it hadn't.

When he peeked around the corner, disappointment settled in. It wasn't Morgan, not that he had truly been expecting her. It also wasn't any form of power armor that he recognized. But it most definitely was power armor, and whoever wore it carried a very large nozzle attached to a tank fixed to the back of the armor, which meant that it was probably a flamethrower. Something else, a very long weapon, was strapped across the armor's back. The most intimidating part, though, was the way they just stood there, staring at him from the street.

The pitch-black power armor reminded him of the nuclear shadows, making him wonder if it really wasn't a hallucination. The eyes glowed orange like fire, and the amor didn't move at all, making it seem even more inhuman. Even though it activated nearly every flight response David had, he still forced himself to call out, rationalizing that the person probably already knew he was there.

"H-hello?" David cringed from the way his voice cracked and crumbled, barely coming out from days of disuse. He tried again, hoping it would be better. "Hello?"

The person shifted, the helmet turning to focus on him. "Good afternoon," said the person inside in a metallic, gruff voice, sounding like they were just taking a stroll. "I've been wanting to talk to you."

"What for?" David asked, both relieved and pondering new issues. This was a person, a human, which meant there were still people alive out here and not just the corpses. However, he wasn't really sure if he wanted their attention, given that they were obviously geared to fight a small army.

"Mind if I come in? I think we'd both benefit from some company," the man said. "Been wearing this suit for days, it'd be nice to take some time to move around on my own legs. Probably smell like hell, though, so I could understand if you don't want me stinking up the place."

Weighing his options, David's desire for actual human company outweighed his preservation instincts. "Alright," he said, lowering the hunting rifle. He probably couldn't have done anything with it anyways. "Come on down."

Servos whirred as the man's armored feet lifted, clunking down on the asphalt and concrete. David walked down the stairs, watching the man follow out of the corner of his eyes. In the power armor, he was larger than David by at least a foot, and far more intimidating. The ancient concrete stairs crumbled slightly as the man walked down, but less than he would've expected out of power armor that size. Finally, he walked to the center of the room as David pulled two broken down chairs to a slab of fallen ceiling that David used as a breakfast table.

Then, the armor popped open from the back, allowing a blonde man with close-cut hair and a scruffy, half-grown beard to step out. He wore a black bodyglove with some bulk to it, tipping David off that he was probably armored under it. When the man turned, pulling a pistol out of a holster strapped to the power armor's thigh and taking steps towards the seat that had been pulled out for him, David was also somewhat shocked to realize that the man was several inches shorter than him. Not of the ordinary, but it felt wrong.

"Richard Graham," said the man, sticking out his hand. He had green eyes and an assured countenance, a half-smirk seeming near permanent on his face. Hesitantly, David took the hand, noting that Richard made no attempt to squeeze or establish his own dominance. "Who might you be?"

Weighing his choices carefully, David decided his own name would be fine. After all, it didn't mean anything in this place. It didn't seem like anything did. "David King."

Richard sat down, placing his pistol down on the slab, pointing away from either of them. It was a boxy thing, looking more like a flashlight with a gun grip than a weapon. "I see you're from a vault," Richard started off, nodding towards him. "Don't get a lot of those these days. Most have already run their course."

Glancing down at his jumpsuit reflexively, David asked, "Who are you? I mean, really. I wouldn't expect most people to have power armor, especially considering all… this." He gestured around, indicating the state of the great city.

Nodding, Richard said, "Well spotted. I'm a man on a mission, and I need your help with it."

And now David had a very bad feeling. "My help?" he asked, laying his hand on the 10mm in its holster on his hip. "What could I possibly do to help you? I have no experience with anything in this hellscape."

"Then it's a good thing that my mission pertains to something not really of this hellscape. I need access to a vault, and that requires a pip-boy. I lost mine in a gunfight with the Brotherhood of Steel." Richard shrugged, displaying an air of nonchalance.

"Why would I help you get into a vault? Do you even have the authorization to do that?" David asked, sliding his left arm and pip-boy off the slab.

Richard's half-smirk turned into a full grin. "Of course, I do. I'm with the government of the United States of America."

"Don't bullshit me." David was unamused, his tone flat. "There's no way the government survived this."

"Why would you think that? I would think that the President and his people would have the very best protection of all in the nuclear apocalypse, seeing as they were the ones to commission the vaults in the first place," Richard said. He stood up, startling David into nearly pulling the pistol out of its holster. "Relax, I'm just grabbing proof. Or, well, all the proof I can provide."

Walking over to the power armor, he turned the wheel on the back to open it up again. After pulling some small chain out of a pouch on the inside, he slapped the armor to close it again and walked back to the table. "Here," he said, handing it over to David.

Taking the dangling chain, David grabbed the rectangular piece of metal with a glowing blue square hanging off the end and brought it to where he could read the writing. It read Richard Ethan Graham on the first line, a string of numbers on the second, the third denoting his blood type as B+, and the final one reading Catholic. When he touched the glowing blue square, a full-body holographic image of Richard sprung up. After examining it for a while, David finally nodded. "Alright," he said, a touch grudgingly. "What does the government need my help with?"

"We go by the Enclave these days," Richard said. "And like I said, I need to get into a vault. You have the materials to do so, and I'm guessing you know vaults pretty well. So, you help me, and I can get you someplace better to sleep at night, maybe a few friends too. Not a lot of those around these ruins. You're lucky I was there to bail you out of that situation with the ghouls."

David frowned. "Ghouls?" he asked.

"Yeah, when people get pumped full of radiation, they either die horribly or turn into a ghoul. Y'know, the grey-skinned rotting people that attacked you." Richard spread out his hands, a what-can-you-do gesture.

"That was you?" David asked, keeping his tone carefully neutral and clenching his jaw.

"Sure was," he said, pointing a thumb at his armor. "See that beaut of a rifle? Fifty cal, haven't found a target that I can't one-tap with it. Hell, can usually tap more than one at once, just like you saw."

"And why, exactly," David said, his voice much quieter, "Did you wait so long to talk to me?"

Richard shrugged. "Can never be too careful. Had to make sure you had the tools I needed and the skills necessary to join in. If you didn't, I would've just taken the pip-boy off your corpse and figured out the vault on my own."

That took David a second to process, blinking. "Thought you said you were with the government."

"Was the holotag not enough?" Richard said, his tone of voice dry and his eyes narrowing.

"I didn't think the United States government, built on the principles of freedom and equality, would be so callous with the life of one of their citizens, leaving them to die or lose their minds to paranoia," David growled, scowling across the slab. "If that's what the government is like now, maybe I don't want to help."

Richard snorted. "Take a good look around you. The only freedom around here is the freedom to commit any crime you want without any punishment. Equality doesn't mean jack shit other than a nice sentiment that most people don't have time to think about since they're too busy blowing each other's brains out the back of their skulls."

"There are more people?" David asked, losing his scowl. "Where are they?"

"Trust me, kid, you don't want to meet them. Murderers, rapists, raiders, and mutants are all that's left out here. Little warlords trying to carve out kingdoms of their own across the wasteland where they can be god. The Enclave is trying to change all that, get things in real order for the true citizens of America. We have a vision where the people can live without watching their backs for the next bullet, without wondering which of their friends will die next. Where we'll all live in the comforts of the Old World and be able to advance as a society again. Right now, that vision needs you." Richard stared into his eyes, hard and unflinching. "You've got a chance to take your place in history, to change this hellscape for the better for everyone coming after you. Will you take it?"

The man held his hand out. David could see his sincerity, the belief he had in this vision of his. Maybe this was his first step towards making things better for his vault. He didn't know what Richard or this Enclave needed, but if it would help put this broken world back together, what kind of man would he be if he refused?

David took his hand, staring back into his eyes with his own conviction. "Where are we going?"


End file.
